Archive for the ‘Porsche Cayman’ Category

Porsche’s new 718 Boxster and Cayman sports cars mark the dawn of a new era for the German automaker. Along with the recently refreshed 911 Carerra, they represent the future for the company, a future that has a lot of purists down in the dumps. This new duo represents the death of the naturally aspirated flat-six engine in mainstream models. In its place is a future of downsized, turbocharged, direct-injection engines, and, having driven the new cars recently, we can report that the purists should have little to worry about. Those new engines are rather clever pieces of engineering with a direct link to Porsche’s latest-and-greatest, all-conquering race car, the 919 Hybrid.

That engine

Over the years, Porsche has rightly won quite a reputation for the flat-six engines it builds, and as such the new family of turbocharged engines has a lot to live up to. According to Markus Baumann, who was in charge of engine development, the keys to the new motor were ensuring it kept Porsche’s traditional free-revving nature and characteristic sound. On top of that, engine capacities have been “right-sized” for the 21st century. For the 718, that means losing a pair of cylinders—space constraints in the new chassis (and presumably a desire to differentiate the cars from the more expensive 911) mean there’s a choice of two four-cylinder horizontally opposed “boxer” engines.

When we last met CJ Wilson Racing, the team had just won the 2015 Street Tuner championship in the Continental Tires Sportscar Challenge. For 2016, this racing team led by the Major League Baseball star of the same name has stepped up to Grand Sport, the top class in the Continental series. And it’s doing so with a brand-new race car—the Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport.

With the Cayman GT4, Porsche finally did something most of us have been waiting for; it built a track-focused Cayman. The company has always said that the 911 is the flagship, and until the GT4, it was fairly obvious that Weissach did not want to cannibalize sales of track-biased 911s by letting its mid-engined younger brother upstage things. But Porsche has a habit of making a stripped out version of models that have reached their end of life—The Cayman (and Boxster) are now part of the 718 family, and from here on out they will use turbocharged 4-cylinder engines. The naturally aspirated 6-cylinder Cayman GT4 is a prime example of the breed.

Those who’ve driven the road car have come away breathless and delighted, and if you want one be prepared to pay a big premium over msrp. A racing version showed up at November’s LA Auto Show, complete with 911 GT3 front suspension and a PDK gearbox in place of the road car’s conventional six speed manual. Even though the team is in its early days with the new car, Wilson seemed impressed. “It’s amazing how capable this car was out of the box,” he told Ars. “We slapped Continental tires on it, put it at the right ride height, changed some springs around and went out and whacked it on the track. We put up some good times. We have have two really good drivers but Porsche did everything they needed to do.”